On MLB’s New Pitch Clock and “Icing the Pitcher”

If you watch American football, you’re probably familiar with the concept of “icing the kicker.” For the uninitiated, icing the kicker is not actually the process of freezing the kicker in Carbonite, though that would probably be more fun. Instead, icing the kicker refers to the opposing team calling a time out just before the kicker is about to attempt a field goal or extra point, with the aim of disrupting the kicker’s timing or focus, and causing the kicker to miss said attempt. We saw it happen to the Chicago Bears’ Cody Parkey in the most recent NFC Wildcard game.

Why does this matter? Because a recent rule change has raised the question of whether such a tactic would work in baseball. The twenty-second pitch clock is currently being tested in spring training.

While this has been the rule in the minors for a while, it will be an adjustment for major league veterans who came up before 2015 and aren’t as familiar with it. And that’s led to the question of whether hitters should attempt the tactic of icing the pitcher. FanGraphs alum Travis Sawchik explained the reasoning thusly, while our own Dan Szymborski highlighted the loophole that makes it possible:

In other words, the new rule says that a pitcher has 20 seconds to begin his windup and come set from the time he receives the ball, provided it isn’t the first pitch of an at-bat. However, the rule doesn’t require the hitter to stay in the batter’s box during that time. So is Travis right? Could hitters “ice the pitcher” by waiting until five seconds before the pitch clock expires, thus forcing the pitcher to rush his delivery?

The answer is actually fairly complicated. The idea behind icing the pitcher is that it will make him deliver a worse pitch. It’s a mind game. But it might not be a mind game that works all that well. The evidence from other sports is mixed as to whether such a mind game would even be effective. Older research suggested a correlation between icing the kicker and missed field goals, but more recent research is all over the map. Some studies, for example, have found that icing the kicker can be effective, but only on longer distance kicks. Other studies of the effectiveness of iced kickers have found no statistically significant difference between the success rates of iced kickers and those who were allowed to proceed with their kicks without interruption. In fact, some of the research even found that the effectiveness of iced kickers was better than kickers who weren’t iced.

Now obviously, there’s a significant difference between kicking a football and throwing a baseball. So let’s look at the other sport where “icing” is a thing: basketball, where teams sometimes ice the opposing team’s free throw shooters. There, too, there’s no real evidence that icing a free throw shooter reduces the odds of making a free throw. The odds of a successful free throw are pretty much the same, whether or not the other team decides to ice the player. Interestingly, though, there is some evidence that icing can be effective when used against specific players. Pitchers are creatures of routine, and presumably could suffer from mind games just as their compatriots in other sports might. Further study would be required to verify if the practice had any baseball-specific effects. But the results from football and basketball suggest the practice’s efficacy might be limited.

So how likely are we to see icing the pitcher when the pitch clock makes its way to the majors? It’s unclear. We don’t see much – if any – pitcher icing in the minors, where the pitch clock has been in use for years. That might be the result of minors prioritizing player development over winning, but you’d think if it was at all effective, at least a few teams would have tried it.

And remember that a rule was implemented in 2015 that required hitters to keep one foot in the batter’s box between pitches, which could preempt this strategy. That is, it could preempt the strategy if the rule were enforced, which it really isn’t. As Eduardo Encina explained:

In 2015, MLB made a rule that hitters had to keep at least one foot in the batter’s box, but enforcement of the rule varied. Hitters received warnings for being slow and repeat violators were fined, but no penalty impacted the game itself.

But even if hitters followed this rule, a hitter could still ice the pitcher just by waiting to put his second foot in the batter’s box until five seconds were left on the pitch clock. Icing the pitcher as a strategy might be reduced, but it wouldn’t be eliminated.

So what could pitchers do instead? Under the proposed rule being tested in spring training, a pitcher has a few options. He could, first of all, come set and then step off the pitching rubber, thereby icing the hitter right back. Depending on how often this is used, the pitch clock could thereby actually lengthen games if we had a lot of the tit-for-tat icing contests, though I assume at some point we’d reach a homeostasis of sorts. The pitcher, if there’s a runner on base, could simply feint a throw there. Most relief pitchers, who are likely in the game in the highest-leverage spots, pitch from the stretch anyway, meaning it takes not much time at all to go from “staring in” to “coming set.” Even Dellin Betances, who is notoriously slow to the plate, doesn’t need five seconds to do that. And it’s worth noting that the pitcher might not even have to rush his delivery, even if he did have only five seconds left. The rule says that the pitcher merely has to begin his windup, not that he has to actually deliver the ball. In other words, it really doesn’t matter how fast you are to the plate. It just matters how quickly you can come to a set position, though pitchers will likely be loath to alter their mechanics in such a manner.

It’s also possible – though perhaps unlikely – that the catcher might be impacted by icing if a hitter waited fifteen seconds to get in the box. All of a sudden, the catcher has to call a pitch and get the pitcher to agree to it, in five seconds. The catcher can, of course, think about what to call when the hitter’s not in the box, but he can’t give the signs until the hitter settles in. Ordinarily, we’d probably see the catcher trot out to talk to the pitcher about it…but there’s that pesky mound visit rule. Of course, right now there’s no real way to quantify this, because it’s all theoretical, but it would be interesting to look at in a baseball-specific study of the phenomena.

All in all, icing pitchers seems unlikely to be a widely used strategy. Even if it became a Thing, it might be one of the more easily fixable Things in baseball history. One would imagine that if batters tried to press their advantage, opposing pitchers and managers would certainly have something to say about it. The desire to gain a small advantage might finally inspire greater adherence to the one-foot-in-the-batters-box. After all, all umpires would have to do to address the issue is start enforcing that rule, and icing would be essentially mitigated. In fact, it might make sense for umpires to start enforcing that rule now, along with the pitch clock. After all, the pitcher can’t delay a game all by himself.